A Wizard Walks Into A Bar
by GhostOfBambi
Summary: Contrary to popular belief, it's not always the man who does all the chasing.


**Author's Note: It's a oneshot. Stuff happens. On an unrelated note, I have a Twitter account that this silly website refuses to let me link to in this document, but my Twitter name is juicycapoochie, if anyone would like to tweet me up.**

**A Wizard Walks Into A Bar**

The Three Broomsticks was packed to the rafters, as was the norm on every first Hogsmeade weekend of the year. Madam Rosmerta's regulars tended to avoid the place on Saturdays such as this particular one; to enjoy a quiet drink whilst surrounded by a hundred raucous teenagers would be a near impossible feat. Today, unsurprisingly, the majority of Rosmerta's clientèle comprised of dozens of Hogwarts students, many of them third years on their first foray out into the elusive village, who had crowded into the pub in droves, eager to enjoy the taste of butterbeer and a few hours of freedom from the oppressive regulations and strict schedules that came hand in hand with living in a boarding school.

How James Potter had managed to secure a table in such an overcrowded pub was nearly beyond him, and he had noticed that he had been attracting a few jealous glances over the course of the afternoon from fellow students, particularly Slytherins, who had not been so fortunate in their endeavours to find a place to sit. He supposed he might have been acting a little selfishly, sitting in a booth all by himself in a pub where people were plenty and seats were few, but he wasn't idling, and Rosmerta was too fond of him to care, and he felt he was just as deserving of a break from the castle as any of his surrounding peers.

October had been an unusually exhausting month for James. Now that he was in his final year, his homework load had doubled in size, which was fair enough and not much cause for complaint - everybody else in seventh year was facing the same workload. Added to this, however, were his many duties as Quidditch captain and, because Dumbledore had apparently taken leave of his senses over the course of the summer and fancied a good laugh, the numerous new responsibilities he had shouldered upon his appointment as Head Boy. James was, of course, grateful for the opportunities that had been presented to him, but he was also tired, and therefore couldn't muster up much guilt over the matter of the table he had stolen from the needy. He had an important essay to write, and if he felt like writing it in the pub with a refreshing drink and a bag of Honeydukes' toffees by his side, he was going to do just that, regardless of the space he may have been wasting that other punters were desperately in search of.

"You wouldn't mind if I joined you, would you?"

He had been thoroughly engrossed in his work for a good fifteen minutes and hadn't been taking much notice of his surroundings, and therefore it was with a small start of surprise that he looked up and realised that, of all people, Lily Evans had walked over to his table, a bottle of butterbeer in one hand and a glass of pumpkin juice the other, and was now requesting that she be allowed sit with him. It took him a moment or two of staring to recollect his thoughts and answer in the affirmative, and he followed it up with a claim that he hadn't seen her coming into the pub, or he would have said hello.

Of course, that was a lie. James had been aware of her presence in the pub, because James was _always_ aware of her presence, no matter where she may or may not have been situated. Lily Evans had been the principal occupant of James Potter's thoughts and desires for a small handful of years, and he had long since come to accept that he was incapable of ignoring the redheaded minx. Living in the same house, taking all of the same classes and working together as Head students necessitated a large majority of every typical day to be spent within a short distance of one another, and even though they rarely spoke to one another socially, having only been on civil terms for the past half year, he saw rather a lot of her, which meant that she was often sure to be the focus of his acutest attentions. For Lily to approach him of her own volition was improbable, however. They had both discovered and agreed that they worked well together as Head students, and Lily no longer despised him as she had when they were younger, but their relationship was still not anything close to resembling friendship.

If Lily saw through his lie, she made no indication of it, save to smile as if rather amused by him.

"I've been over there with Mary for the past hour," she informed him, turning and using the bottle of butterbeer to point towards the other end of the room, where a dark haired young woman was standing by the bar with her equally dark haired boyfriend, deeply engrossed in some private conversation, probably. "We weren't expecting Eddie to turn up, but I guess he's been missing Mary and decided to surprise her. He works at the Ministry now, you know."

"Oh, does he?" said James, pretending to look upon Mary Macdonald and her recently graduated boyfriend with great interest, so as to disguise the fact that the only thing he actually _was_ interested in at the present was the slender young woman who stood not a foot away, and her reasons for choosing to join him at his booth. "Is he doing anything interesting?"

"Department of Magical Games and Sports, I think. He was bragging about being on some organisational committee for the Quidditch World Cup next summer, I dunno, I wasn't really listening. I'm not interrupting you, am I?" Lily did not wait for him to answer, but dropped into the cushioned bench opposite him and slid the bottle of butterbeer across the table, apparently not interested in hearing what James might have had to say about Eddie Bones and his burgeoning career at the Ministry. "I got you this because I noticed yours was empty, and I thought it might be nice to keep you company, but I can leave if you're busy with something."

James looked down the essay on the table. He had only just started it, it had not even begun to take shape, and it was sure to take an age to finish, due to the complicated nature of the thing. He had very much wanted to devote several hours of the day to completing it.

"What, this thing?" He snorted derisively and attempted to look cool without making it appear as if he was attempting to look cool, a move which he had absolutely no idea how to pull off, because he wasn't Sirius, and he didn't have an elegant curtain of hair that fell gracefully over his eyes and aided him in appearing detached and disinterested. "I'm nearly finished. Actually, I was just about to put it away. Thanks for this, by the way," he added, motioning to the butterbeer. "Nice of you, Evans."

The blatantly casual tone of his voice sounded, to James, ridiculous, overemphasised and hopelessly feigned. Meanwhile, Lily Evans was sitting across from him as cool as a cucumber. She, of course, could not possibly be feeling nervous at the prospect of spending time with him. Sure as he lived, her inner monologue wasn't working up a frantic sweat as it tried to figure out the best way she could present herself to him without making herself look like an idiot. This was a particular frame of mind that she could not possibly understand, because she was Lily Evans, and she was magnificent. What effort could possibly be required on her part to endear _her_ to anyone, let alone a drooling, ridiculous idiot such as himself? He was all show; she knew that, his friends knew that, even he knew it. Lily Evans could have eaten him for breakfast.

"You're very welcome," Lily replied, with a wry smile, watching as James rolled up his essay and stuffed it into his bag, which was sitting next to him on his bench, as quickly as he could manage without looking as if he was eager to get rid of it. "Transfiguration essay, I assume?"

"Yeah," he admitted, ashamed, for some reason, of the fact that he had to complete his homework like a regular person, and not just miraculously shoot it out of his arse before class began every morning. Sirius liked to say that Lily Evans could be so freakishly scary when she wanted that her homework probably completed itself for her. "I know it's not due for a week, but I thought I'd get started on it early."

"Easy work for you, I suppose. Transfiguration's your subject."

"Well, not as easy as usual. Seventh year, and all that," he said. "But it's decent enough."

There was a small lull in conversation, as Lily did not seem to be in a hurry to respond to him. Instead, she looked down at her of pumpkin juice and began to trace the rim of the glass with her fingertip, smiling to herself at something that must have been a secret. He racked his brains for something to say to her, something impressive and profound, something that could make him look clever. He came up with nothing.

"I was watching you writing it from across the bar, you know," she announced all of a sudden, without any shame, looking up at him with mischief in her pretty green eyes. Halfway through the act of raising his bottle of butterbeer to his lips, James froze, contemplated staring at her, but wisely settled on taking a swig and setting it back down on the table, as if being scrutinised by Lily Evans was not a big deal, and didn't make him want to tap dance across the top of the Rosmerta's bar.

"You were watching me from all the way over there?" He looked over towards Mary and Eddie, right on the other side of the pub. "That's a bit creepy, Evans, I have to say."

"For the sake of sparing me embarrassment, please, disregard how sinister that admission has made me appear," said Lily with a laugh, pushing a lock of beautiful red hair behind her ear. She wasn't really embarrassed, of course. Why should she have been? "I only meant that I've never seen you work so intently before, and it seemed so unlike you that it made me curious."

"Actually, that's always how I work," he confessed, returning her laugh. "I just do it in my dormitory most of the time so you won't see, and think that my brilliance comes naturally."

"Oh, I've always known the truth about you, Potter," she teased. "You might seem annoyingly clever in class, but anyone who'd freely consult Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew for romance tips can't be _that_ naturally precocious."

James laughed, albeit uncomfortably. Lily was referring to a time in fifth year when Sirius and Peter had spearheaded a campaign to goad Lily into agreeing to accompany James to Hogsmeade as girlfriend, or at the very least, agreeing to snog him behind the Hog's Head at least once. It was a time that James could have lived a long and happy life determinedly neglecting to remember. "There goes a carefully crafted self-image I've spent years perfecting."

"Indeed," Lily assented, and raised her finger to her lips to lick a droplet of juice. "Where are your friends today, anyway? I'm shocked and appalled see you by yourself on a Saturday afternoon."

"Remus is ill, and Peter and Sirius are in detention," James provided. Accepting a position as Head Boy meant that his days in detention had long since come to a lamentable end. Fond had been the farewell indeed. "I have, I _had_, this essay to finish, so wasn't going to bother coming myself, but the first years were making a racket in the common room, so..."

"So, you decided to go somewhere even noisier?"

"Noisier, but happily devoid of first years."

"You don't like to go to the library to work?"

"I don't mind the library, but I can't be there without Pince breathing down my neck every minute, and it puts me off."

"Why on earth is Pince breathing down your neck?" Lily asked in mild surprise, tracing her glass with her finger again, and then her eyes gleamed with amusement. "Do you think she fancies you?"

"She wouldn't be the first, would she?" he quipped, and immediately regretted it afterwards.

Lily, however, did not seem bothered. On the contrary, she seemed to ponder his words, and then promptly accepted his claim with nothing more than a shrug. Once upon a time, she would have dumped her pumpkin juice over his head.

Of course, once upon a time, Lily Evans would rather have eaten blades than sit across from him in a pub. Or anywhere, for that matter.

"Certainly not," she agreed. "She must be ferociously smitten with you."

"I think it's more likely she suspects that I might be up to something untoward," said James, heart hammering in his chest. It was a wonder his palms weren't sweaty. Lily shouldn't have been allowed to say things like that. It made his brain do stupid things, like fill him with hope for a romantic future with the girl. "I can't say I blame her, really. Two years ago, I probably would have been."

"Oh, well, of course," Lily agreed, and took another sip of her juice. "What troubles you must face, Potter, attempting to escape the inauspicious cloud that has long since been cast over the staff's collective opinion of your character by the follies of your rash and impetuous youth."

"Did you rehearse that sentence before you came over here?"

"I didn't, actually!" she sang, her eyes lighting up again, her lips parting into a giddy, pretty smile. "It just came to me, would you believe it?"

"No," he said flatly, with a smirk that betrayed an ease and confidence he absolutely did not feel. "No, I wouldn't believe it, Evans. Not in a million years."

Lily Evans was so pretty, it was undeniable. So pretty it practically hurt. He ran a hand through his hair - a nervous habit of his that she had practically driven him to develop several years ago. She pouted at his refusal to believe her, but again, failed to become irritated. What a miracle it was, that he was having a conversation with Lily Evans that the girl herself appeared to be enjoying.

"I can assure you of my honesty, Potter, although, I did rehearse my opening line when I came over here," she admitted, pushing her hair behind her ears again. "I was going to sit down without permission, but I thought it might be horribly rude."

"It'd be a bit rich of me to consider something like that rude," James pointed out. "It's the same kind of thing I do all the time."

"Well, yes, Potter, but you're so much more charming than I am."

"Yeah right," he scoffed, laughing, before the look on her face told him that she was actually completely serious. "Says who?"

"Oh, you know," said Lily airily. "All of the girls, all of the boys, Moaning Myrtle, Peter Pettigrew, Professor Flitwick, the front page of the _Daily Prophet_… everyone, really."

"Oh, right, of course," said James, rolling his eyes. "Only I must have missed the '_James Potter is Charming_' edition of the _Prophet_."

"I think you were unconscious with a Quidditch injury when it came out," said Lily, feigning deep sincerity. "And it wasn't so much, '_James Potter is Charming_' as it was '_Breaking News: James Potter in Charm Offensive Shocker - Baffled Experts Claim Sudden Shift in Universe_'. Maybe your mother has it stuck up on the kitchen wall. You should really check and see when you go home for Christmas."

"You should write novels, Evans."

"You should develop and advertise your own range of hair care products, Potter."

"Because I'm so handsome and beautiful, yeah?"

"Actually_._" She cocked her head to one side, looking thoughtful. "When I saw you on the platform at King's Cross for the first time, you know, going to school, back in first year, I thought you were exceedingly handsome."

This was such a ludicrous claim that James laughed outright, before realising, for the second time, that really she wasn't joking. Common sense, however, told him to continue to refuse to accept the truth.

"Yeah right," he said, sounding a lot more incredulous than he felt. "No you didn't."

"Oh, I did, yeah," she insisted, eyes wide, and laughed good-naturedly at what must have been the follies of her own rash youth. "Granted, I was eleven and stupid, and incredibly prone to exaggeration, but I'm quite sure that I was passionately in love with you for close to ten minutes."

"Bloody hell, Evans. I can't believe I missed _that_ massively wide window of opportunity," he quipped, to which she giggled. This news was, of course, somewhat devastating, even disregarding the fact that at the age of eleven he was no more interested in women than he was in becoming a Death Eater, and he was sure it would cause him considerable anguish for the rest of his life. "What happened to change your mind?"

"You opened your mouth," Lily replied, not missing a beat.

"Should've guessed. My propensity to speak is generally the problem I have with women."

"Well, as I've already said," Lily reminded him. "You're far more charming than you used to be."

"Stop giving me compliments," he scolded. "It confuses me."

"Friends are _supposed_ to give compliments to one another," Lily pointed out. "Although, _are_ we friends? I've been trying to figure that one out for a while."

James contemplated her words for a while. She seemed as if she genuinely wanted to know the answer to her question, although how she expected him to know better than she did was beyond him. He had absolutely no idea what they were, all he knew is that they weren't what he wanted them to be, which was together. Inseparable. Coupled. Madly in love. Boyfriend and girlfriend. And obviously sexually active, after a reasonable and respectable amount of time had passed. He shrugged, and looked down at his half-empty bottle, tilting it this way and that.

"I don't know, really," he said. "Do _you_ think we're friends?"

"I don't know either, to be honest," Lily admitted. "It's been such a long time, and you're so different now, and _I'm_ so different now, and it would be such a ridiculous waste if we both kept on living in the past and denying ourselves a friendship now that we've been through so much, and now that, well, that whole mess with Severus, you know?"

James nodded noncommittally, and looked up from his bottle. For the first time since she had joined him at his booth, Lily did not look as if she was perfectly at ease. He wondered if it was because she was thinking of Snape. He had Lily had not had the healthiest of friendships and even James, who was unabashedly biased towards her, could admit without prejudice that she had been the one who ended up suffering the most for it. She had been far kinder to Snape than he had ever deserved, and now she was being kind to him.

He wondered if she knew how grateful he was for that.

"Yeah," he agreed, his tone apologetic. "That _was_ a big mess."

"Well, now he's out of the picture doing… whatever it is you do when you're preparing to live the life of a murderer, and things are a lot clearer for _us_, and you and I get along, don't we? I mean, we can chat."

"We're chatting right now, in fact," James pointed out, smiling at her. "Of course, there's always the chance that the conversation could become awkward and uncomfortable, but neither of us would want to admit it for the sake of preserving a recently blossomed friendship, which means we'd end up sitting here like idiots, stupid and embarrassed, and staring at one another from across the booth with the mutual realisation that we had absolutely nothing to say to one another."

"I think _you're_ the one who should write novels, Potter."

"I know," he said, all modesty. "I have such a way with words."

"You're aware, of course, that that's the kind of thing that happens to old couples who've been married for sixty years or so, that death of conversation, and not to seventeen year old N.E.W.T students with too much to say for themselves?"

"Sixty years if they had children," James amended. "It's really more like twenty years if they didn't. That's why married couples have kids; so they can have something to moan about once the rest of their conversation dries up."

"Thank you for clarifying that, you master of human psychology, you," Lily teased, her lips quirking into a delicious little smirk. "Anyway, if it _does_ happen to come to that, which, let's be honest, it probably won't, because you could talk the hind legs off a chair if you took it into your head and I'm a woman, and we both know that women are _hardly_ capable of keeping their mouths shut -"

"Refreshing honesty on your part."

"- I know how to end the silence, anyway. I've got some absolutely _dreadful_ jokes, and they'd make for as good an ice-breaker as anything, so really," Lily concluded, leaning back in her seat with some satisfaction. "I think we'll be fine."

"I think I'm going to have to hear one of these absolutely dreadful jokes before I'd feel comfortable furthering this conversation," said James, grinning cheekily. It was he, James Potter, who was the king of bad jokes. This little redheaded vixen was heading for a fall if she thought she could come skipping along and whip that particular crown from atop his head. "You know," he added. "Just so I can be sure you're not bluffing."

"Okay," said Lily, sitting up straight and apparently full of enthusiasm. "Okay, I'll take that bait. How about this one? What's green and invisible?"

"I don't know. What _is_ green and invisible?"

With an incredibly unattractive snort of laughter that James found endearing for exactly that reason, Lily cupped her hands together as if trying to hold water, and held them out beneath James' nose.

"This apple."

James stared down at Lily's hands, and then up at her face. It was a dreadful joke, but Lily seemed to be wildly amused by it, as she was barely suppressing a giggle that James could see she badly wanted to let free. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"That's _bad_, Evans."

"I know," she said, snickering. "It's tragic, isn't it?"

"No, Evans," he pressed on, shaking his head from side to side. "No. I mean, that's _bad_. That's _really_ bad. That's waking up with a hangover and realising that you're lying naked next to Horace Slughorn _bad_."

"There's an anecdote in there somewhere."

"Oh, obviously there is, but I'm legally obligated to keep it to myself."

"You can't break the law for me, Potter?"

"Would but I could, Evans, but my hands are tied."

"Some secret governmental agency hired Slughorn as a mole and got you by the balls, didn't they?"

"Christ, Evans, you've cracked it in one. How on earth did you _do_ that?"

"Must be my natural brilliance."

"Or you could be an accomplished Legilimens."

"I might know more about the whole operation than you think."

"You might just be secretly in on it."

"I have a massive crush on you, James."

The air around them changed all of a sudden. He changed. She changed. The entire building seemed to change. Where once there had been yells and chatter and the raucous laughter of a hundred surrounding students, there now was nothing, and everything was eerily still and quiet; all sound sucked from the atmosphere like a vacuum.

He stared at her in shock, his eyes wide behind his glasses, mouth open and gaping and decidedly unattractive. _Her_ face had changed entirely; the merry expression in her eyes had vanished in an instant, and she stared down at her hands, which were twisting and fidgeting on the tabletop. The awkwardness of the situation was palpable, so much so, in fact, that Madam Rosmerta, who had spotted James and Lily sitting together and had tottered over to their table with evident design to discover the reasons why, stopped in her tracks upon nearing them and hastily escaped back to the bar.

He willed himself to speak. Nothing happened. She had wiped his mind blank with only eight words. All he could do was gaze at her. He felt as if he'd been punched in the stomach.

"I'm so sorry," she blurted out of nowhere, looked up, looked back down, and then she was speaking very, very quickly, as if she was determined for him to miss what she was saying. "I mean, I'm _not_ sorry for telling you because I'd been planning on telling you because I was pretty sure you'd already figured it out for yourself, but I'm such an idiot, springing it on you like that. I have no idea why that happened. It wasn't supposed to. I've been so worried about telling you because I feel like I don't even have the right to feel this way, not after everything that happened between us – I was such a bitch sometimes, but it never stopped you when you liked me, but you probably don't even like me like that now, do you? Why would you? _I_ wouldn't."

She had to pause for breath, and after that, she couldn't seem to think of anything more to say, so with what must have been great effort on her part, she stopped talking, and kept her eyes trained fixed on his face, which in the interim had somehow managed to regain a more human expression. Clearly, it was time for James to share his opinion of the matter, whether he wanted to or not.

It took him another while to speak, and when he did, his voice sounded strangely hoarse.

"What on _earth_," he murmured, gawking at her as if she were an alien being. "Made you believe that I possibly could have figured it out for _myself_?"

This was apparently not the reply Lily had been hoping for, because her face fell.

"I don't know," she said. "I was being really obvious for ages."

"You weren't," he said, and shook his head, trying to recall if Lily had ever made these feelings obvious. She hadn't. She most certainly hadn't. Or maybe he hadn't been paying attention? "No. You definitely weren't."

"I felt like I was," she gently insisted, looking terrified. "I just didn't know how _you_ felt. I was going to leave it be and see if you might make a move again but Christ, James, I've been dying for you to kiss me for the last eight months and I got so sick of waiting for it to happen, I thought it would just be easier if I came out and said it."

"You want me to kiss you," he repeated flatly, and the words sounded strange to him, as if he was attempting to speak a foreign language for the first time. He laughed, but it was without a hint of humour. "You want _me_, to kiss _you_."

She nodded.

"Right," he said, clueless as to what to do next. Diving across the table to kiss her seemed like the best idea, but he wasn't sure if he could move. Saying something witty and charming seemed almost equally decent, but his vocabulary had been reduced to a small handful of one syllable words. "Right."

"Have I upset you?" she asked, and began to rise from her seat. "I could leave, if you wanted, or I could-"

"No," he interrupted, a flash of life returning to him, and he reached across the table to grab hold of her wrist. She couldn't get away with matter that easily, no matter how much she'd floored him. "Don't you _dare_ leave, Evans."

"Well, I don't particularly want to _leave_, James," she said sulkily, shaking off his grip, clearly annoyed. "But you haven't exactly reacted to my admission in the way I'd hoped. Ideally, you want the person you fancy to be _happy_ when you tell him that you fancy him."

"No. No. No. This is just shock, that's all," he said, jabbing a finger into his own chest as his faculties began to return to him. "I am happy, I'm fantastic, I'm _ecstatic_. I'm flying without a bloody broomstick right now, Evans. You just wait until the shock wears off, and I'll sweep you off your feet. You just wait."

This seemed to be enough to be transformative – because Lily smiled, _beamed_, so brightly and so beauteously that the whole pub seemed illuminated. Instead of dropping back into her seat on the other side of the table, she sat down next to him on his bench, and took the hand that had been holding on to her wrist to place it in her own.

She looked at him. He looked at her. She giggled, bashful, and looked away, and her hand was soft and warm and lovely, and he gave it a gentle squeeze to indicate that yes, he was still functioning, and would hopefully be capable of regular behaviour at any moment.

"How long do you think it'll be before the shock wears off?" she asked, softly.

"I have no idea, I feel all wobbly," he admitted, staring off into space for a moment. "I only came in here to write a Transfiguration essay."

"And I only came to Hogwarts to learn magic," Lily reminded him. "Things happen. Deal with life."

"Call me by my first name again," he instructed her, because it suddenly occurred to him that his name had sounded so much better coming from her lips, and he wanted to hear her say it again. "I like it."

"Call me by mine," she countered.

"I would, but I've forgotten it."

"You've recovered enough to make a joke, I see, but not enough to sweep me off my feet?"

"I'm sweeping you off your feet with humour."

"It's not working."

"It's already worked."

"You're a prat."

"I'm the man of your dreams."

"You're the man of my nightmares."

"You're incredibly beautiful."

"You-" She blushed, caught off guard. "Shut _up_, I am not."

"What?" he asked, laughing at her blushing cheeks. "Didn't you know?"

She giggled, embarrassed, and hid her face behind her free hand.

"No," she murmured, her voice muffled. "No, I didn't."

"I can remind you now and then," he offered, grinning. "If you like."

"I think I would," she replied, peeping at him through her fingers. "Could you?"

"Every day," he promised, pulling her hand away from her face. "If you want me to."

"And twice on Sundays?"

"Three times a day on special occasions."

"I'll keep a highly detailed chart in my dorm."

"I'll use unorthodox methods to sneak in there and check that you're keeping up with it."

"In that case, I might just sneak into your dorm."

"I'll issue you an open invitation."

"And hide all of your things."

"I've always liked treasure hunts."

"And draw on your face while you're sleeping."

"I appreciate art in all its forms."

"You're ridiculous."

"You're worse."

"Hey," she said, and poked him in the stomach. "Hey, Potter, I've got a question for you."

"Oh yeah?"

She smiled at him, _just_ at him, in a way that he'd never seen her smile before, in a way she would never smile at anyone else again, and his entire life had just been turned on its head, and everything was different, but better. So much better.

"Go out with me?"

"Oh," he said, grinning, and swept her off her feet, perhaps. "Alright, then."


End file.
